Agricultural accounts book for Totternhoe

Manuscript in ink on paper in a (usually) easily readable hand, c. 130 pp, plus a few blanks, 8vo, original vellum over boards, a few small spots on cover. With, pasted in as front pastedown and on to front free endpaper, A Collection of Useful Tables, for the Instruction of Youth. Printed for G. Herdsfield, [n.d.]. Loosely inserted is a receipt to Ed. Dynes for assessed taxes, 1822, signed by the Collectors of Totternhoe. The name Edward Dines has been doodled on one page towards the end of the book. This is a very full account book, almost entirely disbursements, compiled over several years. It reveals details of payments for all kinds of labour, including thrashing barley and wheat, cutting chaff, dock cutting, thatching, weeding, mowing, reaping, making faggots, drawing straws; and for goods including oats, bushels of soot, loads of wheat, a cart, sheep, pigs, cattle, horses, etc. A mine of information regarding current prices. The front pastedown and free endpaper is a printed "Collection of useful tables for the Instruction of Youth", or for the memory-jogging of farmers presumably. The Tables are unrecorded. There are a couple of interruptions to the accounting: one page, semi-calligraphic, reads apparently :'Some Consideration of the Uncertainty Gross deceipt' - but nothing follows.

Edward Dynes helped compile the accounts for agricultural taxes in Totternhoe in the early years of the nineteenth century.

Open for research although at least 24 hours notice should be given.

Blackwell's bookshop.

Part of the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature.

Catalogued to collection-level on the Senate House libraries archives catalogue, https://archives.libraries.london.ac.uk/Details/archive/110056952#

Previously sold (unknown date) by Lesley Aitchison (manuscripts, maps dealer).